


these broken shards, these bleeding lines (all leading back to you)

by TheSilverQueen



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-06 08:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17936300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSilverQueen/pseuds/TheSilverQueen
Summary: Those who pass through a ravage gateway end up stuck in a reincarnation cycle, and there's only one way to break it. There's just one problem: Death is the only being who knows the answer, and they aren't in a sharing mood.And so Will and Hannibal meet, and meet again, and meet again, and again, and again, and again. . .





	1. the road to hell is paved with running away from Uncle Jack

Will and Hannibal are running.

It’s not an unusual state of being for them, of course. As long as Will can remember, he’s been running: away from his parents, away from his boss, away from his abilities, away from Hannibal, away from the universe. It’s the instinctive reaction of any animal, and Will’s been doing it so long that flight is far more natural to him than anything else.

Hannibal is quite the opposite. Hannibal fights: he bares his teeth, he rolls up his sleeves, he hides his feelings and thoughts behind masks and suits, he slithers and whispers and guides, he prowls and chokes and pounces. 

If anything, it at least makes for a very interesting sex life.

Then again, right now, sex is the probably the last thing on Will’s mind.

Because right now, they are running from Intersol’s fleet of the very best, their little ship is half on fire and half in pieces, and Hannibal is bleeding out on the floor next to him, trying valiantly not to make any noise whenever a shot connects.

“Will,” Hannibal says, in a tone of voice that means he’s been saying it for a while.

Will whips around the nearest piece of debris and ignores the sweat beading into his eye. Pain just makes the world go sharper and brighter, and Will needs all the adrenaline he can get if they’re to survive this. Hannibal and the _Mischa_ have been Will’s entire life for almost three and a half years now; maybe he can’t fly her better than Hannibal can, but he can damn well maneuver her through this debris field better than any snot-nosed pilot Jack Crawford can throw at them.

“Will.”

It’s also incredibly motivating to know exactly what will happen if they’re caught. Perhaps Will might be caged in an asylum or, if Jack takes pity, he might be placed for rehabilitation like a wild animal being domesticated, but Hannibal . . . for Hannibal there will be no mercy. Jack will have him flayed alive, or perhaps boiled, or perhaps merely starved and then flayed and then boiled. Jack’s been chewing on revenge for Hannibal for a long, long time, and when it’s the sentence of the most infamous serial killer in the entire universe, the public will be hungry for a spectacle of a death. 

“Will.”

There’s an enormous _crack_ and Will winces as the _Mischa_ picks up speed. It’s a really good thing he moved all the essentials into the cockpit when he first got the alert that Intersol fighters were on their tial.

And, well, Hannibal might kill him for this, but . . .

Will yanks the controls and sends the _Mischa_ into a roll that points him in the direction of the cabin that just fell off. One well placed shot, and the entire thing explodes in a brilliant orange-white-blue flame that sends the Intersol pilots scattering, although two go careening straight into an asteroid in their haste.

Two down. Only thirty or so more to go.

A sharp pain makes Will yelp and look reflexively at his stomach, expecting a bit of the ship to have pierced the cockpit, but no – it’s just Hannibal, being a stubborn bastard as usual.

“Will,” Hannibal says sharply.

Will sighs and swings the _Mischa_ behind the nearest, biggest floating piece of junk. He might as well use the breather to actually breathe, since Hannibal seems determined to talk even though he really should have passed out three minutes ago. Will definitely gave him a big enough dose – but then again, Hannibal has a pretty high tolerance even for their kind of lifestyle. He definitely freaked Will out at least two times when Will thought he had Hannibal down for the count and Hannibal popped up behind him like some kind of demented unkillable zombie.

“Four minutes and we’ll be on the nearest hyperspace lane heading straight out of here,” Will says.

Hannibal shakes his head. “They’ll shut it down and you know it. Standard procedure to lock down a hyperspace lane has it down to two minutes or less.”

“Yeah, well, these don’t exactly seem like the best and the brightest of the bunch.”

“They don’t need to be. If dear Uncle Jack is watching, he’ll shut every hyperspace lane within a twenty minute radius.”

Will tightens his hands on the controls until his hands begin to scream. Hannibal’s not wrong; Jack can be fooled, but only once. And he’s not stupid or overconfident enough to give them anything they can use as an advantage.

“Will,” Hannibal repeats, and this time he lifts his hand off the giant bleeding hole in his abdomen to press it heavily against Will’s arm. 

“I will not abandon you. We’ve had this argument.”

Hannibal arches an eyebrow. “No, we did not. The first time I attempted to have this discussion, you punched me in the face. The second time, you bit me. And the third time, you – ”

“Can we not discuss that right now?”

“ – you proposed marriage,” Hannibal continues, because he _is_ a stubborn bastard, and this, this is why Will laughed so hard he nearly fainted when the topic of “obey and honor” came up in the wedding vows. They were Earth-standard, of course, but Will hasn’t lived on Earth since he was six and Will’s pretty sure Hannibal’s set foot on Earth exactly zero times in his entire life. They’d instead substituted with “listen and talk to” and, yeah, they don’t do a great job of that vow either.

The bit about devotion until the end, though – that, they actually do pretty good at.

“I swore an oath,” Will says quietly. “I swore an oath in my blood to cherish you until the end of my days.”

Hannibal’s eyes flick down. It’s a subtle concession to Will’s low blow, to the forearm where shimmering words in old Earth script glimmer on Hannibal’s skin, Will’s blood forever as red and gleaming as the day it was drawn on Hannibal’s flesh to mark them bound until the end of days. Will has a matching mark on his stomach, where Hannibal once slid a dagger in, little red words dancing around a scar that Will chose not to heal, even though the doctors offered three times. 

Incidentally, their marriage counselor hadn’t even looked up from their slow drawl and even slower scrawl of the necessary documentation. 

“An oath can be coerced,” Hannibal says, slowly and painfully. “An oath can be forced.”

“We both know that’s a lie.”

Hannibal looks at him. “Is it? We did not sanctify the knife in the water of our tears or forge it in the fire of our hair. We did not destroy it with our fingers and scatter the pieces with our feet. We did not exchange blood for the vows. An oath can be coerced, Will. There are many secrets you do not know of the old traditions.”

Will sighs. Of all the times for Hannibal to get performance anxiety, it’s now. “Hannibal, seriously. Just because I didn’t come from some old House doesn’t means I know nothing. I sanctified the knife in our blood, because you’re a creeper who has blood around our ship like you’re a vampire. I forged it in the fires of the ship we rebuilt together. And maybe I didn’t destroy the blade myself, but we both launched _Mischa_ the day we got married. To perform the rite in spirit is just as important as performing the rite in tradition. You know this. And moreover,” he says, “I chose this. I chose you. Those words would’ve washed away if I didn’t mean it. No coercion can bind blood freely drawn.”

“They will cage you, Will. I will have a death, but you they will cage. I will not allow it.”

Will rolls his eyes. “Uh, yeah, that’s why I’m trying to fly us out of here.”

“If I surrender,” Hannibal says, “if I surrender, you can tell them you injured me in self-defense. Uncle Jack will ensure a fair trial, if only to cover up his own flaws.”

“I killed three Intersol agents,” Will points out. “Without hesitation. And when you weren’t around. You’re good, Hannibal, but I’ve been playing the game as long as you have, and you aren’t _that_ good. Jack won’t give me squat. And even if he did – even if he did, I wouldn’t take it. To the end of our days; that was the bargain.”

If Hannibal was a good man, this is the time he would say _And I regret making it_.

If Hannibal was a good man, he’d make Will angry.

If Hannibal was a good man, he’d push and push and _push_ until Will threw him out the airlock himself.

But Hannibal isn’t. Hannibal is selfish and cruel and possessive, just as Will loves him, and so he just closes his eyes and concedes defeat. If Hannibal was uninjured, perhaps he could sweet-talk Will into accepting this mad plan – but Hannibal is bleeding out, and Will is exhausted, and the _Mischa_ is falling to pieces around them. Will cannot leave Hannibal now; he’s tied to Hannibal just as firmly as he was the moment Hannibal first walked up to him and asked to shake his hand, never mind the blood spray on Will’s face and the dirt under his nails.

The Mishca chimes a gentle alert, and Will looks down and feels his heart leap in his chest.

A jump gateway. 

It’s not as great as a hyperspace lane, which would have them rocketing away faster than these Intersol pilots can blink, but a jump gateway can still pop them far away in seconds, and wherever there’s a jump gateway, a hyperspace lane isn’t that far away. On top of that, jump gateways can’t be shut down like hyperspace lanes can, because while mankind built hyperspace lanes, they only harnessed the power of jump gateways. It’s their best bet.

“I’m going for it,” Will announces.

Hannibal opens one eye – and then he stiffens. “Will, that is a ravage gateway.”

And, well. That isn’t so great.

“We don’t have another choice.”

“A ravage gateway is pure unharnessed energy,” Hannibal says sharply. “No studies have ever been successfully conducted, no tests successfully ran, no data successfully collected. And there have been no survivors.”

“No _recorded_ survivors. No one knows where ravage gateways lead to.”

“We could land in a black hole.”

Will looks at him – at this gorgeous, half-dead, bleeding man who Will followed into and promptly out of prison, who broke Will into a thousand tiny pieces and put him back together, who Will cut with a knife and then inscribed the age-old vows of marriage upon. There are no words for what he feels when he looks at Hannibal. There is only before Hannibal and now, for Will refuses to ever have an after Hannibal.

“I’d rather die in a black hole than live without you, caged or not,” Will says quietly. “At least there we could have peace from Jack.”

Hannibal sighs heavily. The drugs must be kicking in; Hannibal’s bled so much that the only reason he’s still upright is the fact that Will wrestled him into restraints. He won’t last much longer if Will can’t stop and administer proper medical care.

“Together,” Will says, “or not at all.”

A faint smile quirks Hannibal’s lips. They are the same words Hannibal used the first time they hunted, the first time they feasted, the first time they launched the _Mischa_ into the stars to explore. There is no Will and no Hannibal; there is only Will-and-Hannibal and Hannibal-and-Will. It was once Hannibal’s greatest desire, and Will feels no shame for playing on those feelings. Hannibal got a great deal of fun out of playing with his overheated brain once upon a time, after all.

“Yes,” Hannibal says. “Together.”

And so together, they punch the accelerator that throws them straight into the ravage gateway.

The last thing Will thinks is, _Huh. It looks almost like a mirror._

Then there is only darkness, and disorientation, and an awful tearing rending pain, like his very soul is being shattered into a million shards that are slicing their way out of his body piece by piece.

* * *

_And Death looked into the abyss, and Death said, “Well, $#^*! I didn’t expect anyone to actually be stupid enough to go through that. Much less two of them. I guess it’s time for some popcorn.”_


	2. i just wanna amoeba you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's an amoeba-eat-amoeba world out there, and Amoeba Nine has no intention of getting swallowed up by Amoeba Four. Amoeba Four, of course, has bigger dreams, but first Four wants Nine on board. Hence the extended chase sequence across the ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't taken biology or chemistry or any particularly science-oriented class in a while. I'm pretty use I'm using most, if not all, of these scientific terms incorrectly. I apologize in advance. 
> 
> Amoeba 94255486 (called Nine) is Will. Amoeba 48664885 (called Four) is Hannibal.

They don’t really have names, of course, but if they did – well, even if they did, amoeba sample 94255486 still wouldn’t want anything to do with amoeba sample 48664885. This might have something to do with the latter’s disturbing habit of eating their fellows (Amoeba Nine’s opinion) or it might be because the former is unnecessarily disinterested in evolving and adapting (Amoeba Four’s opinion).

Either way, Amoeba Four has chased Amoeba Nine for days and days and days now, underneath the blackened skies of their world, and Amoeba Nine only has so many places it can go to.

Finally, Amoeba Nine comes to rest in a tiny undersea cove. It doesn’t rest because it wants to interact with Amoeba Four, but, well, an amoeba’s got to eat. And it’s rather difficult to find a steady source of food when one is running away from an amoeba equally determined to run after you.

Amoeba Nine is chomping down a rather nice dinner when Amoeba Four comes waltzing in. They don’t speak, of course, any more than they can hear or smell, but if they did have words, the conversation might go a little like this:

“Oh, not you again,” Amoeba Nine says.

“This is important,” Amoeba Four insists. It’s not even winded or weakened by days of pursuit; the most insulting thing Amoeba Nine could say is that Four is lean, perhaps. 

Amoeba Nine curls in on itself. Once, it accidentally touched Four, and given that this is what started the entire days-long pursuit, Nine has no interest in doing it again. “You shouldn’t have followed me.”

“Why not?” Four asks. “You’re the only reasonable being in the lot, really. I see in you the potential to become, to adapt, to evolve.”

“Like you?” Nine says. “How many of us have you eaten, Four? Is it really you anymore, or just a collection of clamoring voices, all shoving and jostling for an impulse in that great big brain of yours?”

Four drifts closer, bit by bit. Four isn’t what anyone would call threatening; it isn’t even a particularly large amoeba, for all that Nine has seen Four devour an entire swarm of them without pausing. Four is just different, and Four is exactly the reason why most of the swarms won’t accept newcomers anymore. It’s why Nine has been on its own for a while now, because word spreads fast.

“Like recognizes like,” Four says, sweet and soft and slow as the gentle rolling current. “I was there when world went bright and sharp and the sky fire descended. I was the only survivor in my swarm. And I know a fellow survivor when I see one.”

Nine doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to; he knows what a fellow survivor looks like too.

But whatever that sky fire had done to Four, it’s done something completely different for Nine, and Nine does not want to give anything more away. 

“Just eat me and get it over with,” Nine says.

“Now,” Four says, “why would I do that? I want to watch you evolve, and eating you would hardly be compatible with that goal.”

“Evolve into what? Another swarm-ender?”

“Something bigger than a swarm, Nine, do dream big,” Four scolds. Four flexes and sways in the currents, and Nine can’t help but watch. Four is dazzling in an ocean of dull fellow single-celled organisms; what’s worse is that Four _knows it_.

Nine tries to think of something bigger than a swarm. Nine quickly gives up. Nine came into existence in a swarm, and a swarm is all it knows. 

“What could be bigger than all of us together?” Nine prods wearily, since Four obviously won’t go away until Four’s been allowed to gloat. Maybe then Four will leave Nine in peace, once Four realizes Nine can’t see whatever vision Four is cooking up. Maybe, just maybe.

“Why,” Four says, “all of us individually being bigger.”

Nine thinks about it for less than a second, because really. “Any bigger and even you will burst.”

“Not like that.” Abruptly, Four switches gears. “Have you ever been to the top of the waves, Nine? The very, very top, where our world and the world above splits? Where sky fire and crumbling darkness rule?”

“Why would I go there?”

Four edges closer. Four is so beautiful, so mesmerizing, so otherworldly in a normal amoeba body; Nine almost wants to let Four touch it again, just to feel that racing spark down its cell again, just to see that same _potential_ gleaming back at it. “Because, my dear Nine,” Four says, “above is where we are going to _rule_.”

“Not in this form.”

“No, not in this form. That is why we are going to evolve, Nine. We are going to become multicellular.”

Nine gives that statement the appropriate amount of response it deserves, which is silence. It’s Nine’s default response, but Nine figures it suits the situation, because Nine does not want to go around eating fellow amoebas just to one day try to crawl out of the home they were born into.

Four must sense Nine’s skepticism. Perhaps Four and Nine did get the same gift, but shaped in different ways: where Nine can read, Four can understand; where Nine can see, Four can manipulate; where Nine glimpses potential, Four crafts an end goal. 

“I know you have the potential, Nine. I can see it in you, just as you see it in me.”

“I don’t want to eat anyone.”

“You already have. We didn’t get this big by dreaming, Nine.”

“That’s different.”

Four twitches. “Is it? Is it really? Aren’t we all just eating each other, in the end? Do you think we magically disappear when we die?”

“No. But we don’t make each other disappear on purpose either.”

“I don’t want you to disappear, Nine. I want to evolve with you.”

And maybe Four is crazy. Maybe Four did get fried by the sky fire. Maybe Four did lose what little sensibilities it might have started with. 

But Nine has been without a swarm for a long, long, long time. 

“Okay,” Nine says. “Okay. But I reserve the right to eat you first if this goes terribly wrong.”

* * *

In the distance, a shard plunges into the ocean. It is cold and hard and shining, and most of the amoebas and other life forms avoid it instinctively. Down, down, down it spirals, until finally it hits the ocean floor, where it cracks neatly in two.

Nine and Four never see it.

* * *

_And Death looked into the ocean, and Death said, “Awww they’re so adorable! I always forget how adorable they are when they’re small! I can’t wait until cameras are invented and I can snap some candids.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: CATS CATS CATS


	3. a cat's best friend is another cat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will is a Scottish wildcat raised as a house cat. Hannibal is a Maine Coon housecat who grew up feral. They're quite the pair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aka what happens when you watch a documentary on Scottish wildcats. . . Also Maine Coons are hilariously fluffy it's so great.

There is another cat in his enclosure and eating his food. 

Will thinks, for a brief moment, about chasing it away, but soon he decides against it. They’ve put three other cats in his enclosure, and he finds that ignoring them makes the tall two-leggers take them away faster. He has no idea what they want from him, given that other cats don’t tend to think much of Will – the first one hissed and scratched him, the second just ran away with all her fur fluffed out – and he can’t imagine the newest cat is likely to think any better of him.

Still. Will _is_ hungry, and they’ve even gone through the effort to get his favorite: rabbit.

Of course, when Will slinks out and catches sight of the intruder, he isn’t sure who’s more surprised: the two-legger staring with their mouth open or Will himself.

Because this cat is definitely not one of Will’s kin.

Sure, he’s fluffy enough, with a long distinguished tail and fluffed up fur around his neck and black splotches across tawny fur, but Will – even though he’s spent years as a pet and a few more years caged in a zoo – knows one of his one kin from a feral. 

“What are you doing in here?” Will blurts out.

The cat flicks his tail, almost dismissively. Will could probably stomp on him, but he’s so fluffy that Will – who has never hunted in his life – harbors doubts he could actually find flesh underneath. The few attempts with voles and mice have gone . . . well, certainly not well. 

“I am Hannibal,” the cat says primly. He licks his chops and then sits up, curling his tail neatly around his feet. “I saw that you were not partaking of this meat, and it’d be a shame to let it to waste. It’s good meat.”

“ . . . How did you get inside?”

Hannibal smiles. His eyes are faintly yellow, like those sweaters Will’s two-legger used to jam him in and take pictures of. But those sweaters were home and safety; Hannibal is a feral who is more likely to claw Will’s eyes out and bite his tail. He even smells like danger, like fresh blood and dew on the grass and sun-baked earth.

“It’s very easy. I’m surprised you haven’t gotten out.”

And Will isn’t touching that accusation at all, so: “I’m hungry.”

Hannibal lifts a paw and licks at it, as if he’s not concerned at all. “Help yourself. There is plenty.”

The two-legger appears to have vanished, so Will crouches low to ground and inches over to the food. He eats as fast as he dares, one eye on Hannibal and one eye on the food. He doesn’t choke, but it’s a near thing. He drinks from the little fountain and then scrambles back up into the cavern he’s claimed for his own, which is dark and cool and safe.

By the time Will has blinked and turned around, Hannibal is gone.

* * *

Hannibal comes back two days later. He doesn’t eat Will’s food or drink from Will’s fountain. 

He does, however, stare at Will from the other side of the fence.

Will slinks deeper into his cavern.

* * *

A week later, Will wakes up in the middle of the night to find Hannibal sticking his paws in Will’s fountain and grooming himself. Will just goes back to sleep.

* * *

Then one day Will wakes up to find Hannibal sitting right next to him, yellow eyes huge and fixed on him.

Will’s fur expands and he hisses before he can stop himself. The last time he got so close to any cat, he got scratched so badly that his two-legger brought him to a vet, and that was the last time Will had ever seen her again. He’d been caged and poked and prodded and poked some more, until he’d finally been driven far away to wherever here is.

“I am not going to hurt you,” Hannibal says, sounding almost offended. “But that leaf has been in your tail for a week.”

“It hurts when I bite at it.”

Hannibal blinks once, twice, thrice. It’s almost like he’s turned into a statue. “Then why are you biting at it?”

“I – how else do you get things out of your fur?”

And for all of Hannibal’s fluff, he’s _fast_. He sticks his head in Will’s little den and has his tongue on Will’s tail before Will can even flinch. Two rough licks later and the leaf is out, despite Will’s yelps.

“How are you alive?” Hannibal asks. “Did your mother never teach you how to groom yourself?”

“I don’t remember Mother,” Will admits. 

If anything, Hannibal looks even twitchier. “We almost always have brothers and sisters. Where were they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Liar,” Hannibal says. It’s almost a sigh. He lays down, tail flicking from side to side. His eyes are still yellow enough to make Will nervous, but it’s hard to find a fellow cat dangerous when his ears are relaxed and he’s licking at his paw. “I suppose a human caught you, then? I know they’ve been trying to trap us instead of outright murdering us. Perhaps they caught you instead. And then I suppose they just kept you, rather than admitting they’d caught a wildcat as opposed to a feral. So now here we are, with you fully grown and still not much better than a kitten.”

“I groom myself!”

“There’s dirt on your ears and another leaf on the other end of your tail,” Hannibal says flatly.

Will opens his mouth. Closes it. Sighs and lays his own head down. “The two-legger’s kitten begged him not to kill me. She raised me as a cat. I didn’t even know I wasn’t one until the two-leggers took me away.”

“You are a cat,” Hannibal says. “You’re a terrible cat, but you are still a cat.”

Will eyes him. Hannibal is clearly able to take care of himself; the scars dotting his fur are a testament to his ability to survive and thrive. He’d taken Will’s food for the pleasure of sneaking around and the challenge of getting to it, not because he’d been starving. There’s no reason for him to care about one less competitor for resources. “And you care why?”

“Because you smell like a dog,” Hannibal says flatly. “You’re an insult to cats everywhere.”

Will does actually bite him for that. 

Hannibal bats him right across the nose without hesitation or remorse.

“Lesson one,” Hannibal announces. “We have claws and you will use them.”

* * *

“Lesson two,” Hannibal tells him, “it is called grooming yourself and you will do it.”

“I hate water.”

Hannibal unrepentantly sticks a paw in and splashes Will in the face. When Will charges, Hannibal _jumps into the fountain_ and sits there all smug and satisfied, like he isn’t getting drenched and heavy and cold. Will swipes at him and is rewarded with yet another splash of water to the face.

“How are you just sitting there?”

Hannibal’s smile is sly and dangerous. “Come and find out, kitten.”

Will is drenched for hours afterwards. Hannibal dries off just by sitting in the sun and dozing. Will absolutely does not sulk.

* * *

Hannibal teaches Will more important things, of course. How to pounce, how to walk silently amongst leaves and dirt, how to predict where prey are going and lash out effectively. How to eat without making a mess and getting raw blood everywhere with entire rabbits, how to find the safest corners to hide in, how to dodge grabby human hands and lead them on merry chases around the enclosure. How to cuddle close to another cat without being bitten or smacked or clawed.

It gets to the point where the keepers don’t even bother trying to separate them anymore. They’re just two tawny cats with black stripes, one feral and one wild.

* * *

“Quite a pair, aren’t we?” Will says one day.

Hannibal opens one eye. He’s dozing in the light on the rocks, the warmest spot in the entire enclosure, which Will traded for fresh rabbit that Hannibal actually dragged in from . . . well, from somewhere. “Hmm?”

“A feral cat who knows everything about being a wild cat,” Will says. “And a domesticated wildcat who knows everything about being a pet.”

Hannibal snorts. “You’ve always known what you are, Will. I just helped you embrace it and evolve.”

“That’s not what you said before.”

“Say another word and you’ll lose that food.”

Will would say something else, but Hannibal feels no remorse over taking the rabbit back, so really, Will’s only option is to stuff his mouth first and _then_ go annoy Hannibal. Hannibal isn’t stupid, unfortunately, so the second Will’s swallowed the last mouthful, Hannibal stands up and pounces, because the last few days he’s been doing that constantly and Will’s getting slightly better at dodging. Slightly.

Hannibal licks his ear when he’s finally got Will pinned. His fluff isn’t heavy, but it’s just everywhere, so Will just gives up and submits.

“You’re beautiful with blood in your mouth,” Hannibal says suddenly. “Maybe one day I will get the chance to show you how to hunt properly.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been showing me?”

“Mice are hardly rabbit, dear Will.”

“Meat is meat.”

Hannibal laughs. “You will need a hundred mice with that mindset. Rabbits are more filling.”

“I have no plans to leave.”

That earns him a stern bite. “Evolve, Will. Evolve to think past this tiny cage and its tiny fountain and its tiny bowls of food. You are a cat. You belong in the forests.”

“So I can be eaten myself? Pass.”

“One day,” Hannibal says, “one day you will understand.”

* * *

Six months later, the human keeper goes whistling along to deliver food to Will and the feral cat they’ve dubbed Hannibal. She’s utterly shocked to find no cats in the enclosure at all, not in the den, not in the corners, and not on the rocks. A more thorough search reveals a crevice in one tiny corner, so small they’ve never noticed or would have even bothered to repair, with rough tawny fur caught on the sides, like that of a wildcat.

And, well, even though the goal had been to one day reintroduce Will’s offspring or descendants to the wild, they can’t argue against it happening just a little bit sooner.

Far away, in the forests and deep in a nice warm den, two fluffy cats doze away, bellies fat with freshly caught rabbit and noses buried deep in the other’s fur. They will never been seen by humans again.

* * *

In the distance, a shard glitters in the dying light of Will’s old enclosure. Its edges had been smoothed out by humans before it had been tied to the enclosure to give something for Will to play with. He never had.

Now it cracks neatly down the middle and crumbles in the dirt.

* * *

_And Death looked into the forest, and Death said, “They’re so FLUFFY! ”_

**Author's Note:**

> This work is my contribution to #FannibalsRaiseHell! For more information (especially when new chapters are coming out), please check out the post [HERE](http://thesilverqueenlady.tumblr.com/post/183416509719/raising-hell-for-ravage).


End file.
